The map of the Internet spans the globe and shows major data arteries into all the world’s governments and major corporations. Smaller capillaries feed a consumer ordering a Fall outfit on-line from a home computer or a university student studying at a small desk in a dormitory in Idaho reading a document written in Old Norse that was scanned and stored in a library in Oxford England, or even a would-be martyr reading the latest Fatwa against western civilization in original Arabic.  The Internet extends into all lands, embraces all cultures and contributes to countless human activities. Yet, if we leave the bright lights of the Internet and explore the dark areas where no one has gone, we see a big area marked “Here be dragons”.

This unexplored area is outside the elegant algorithms and light-speed technology of network communications it is the area of real human values and real risks to health, safety, and wealth. The area is unexplored because you can get hurt there. What am I talking about?

I’m talking about sharing health data with the good intention of helping people and yet being prosecuted under HIPAA regulations on privacy. Worse, I am talking about losing a job or loan because of pre-existing health conditions.  Who can put a cost on a life lost because a patient with a rare disease didn’t find out about an available treatment but the doctor’s couldn’t find the patient because of HIPAA.

I’m also talking about losing the business of your best customer because you extended a better deal to an anonymous party on the Internet or losing your shirt because that anonymous party received goods or services and disappeared. Good business opportunities are lost because it would violate all common business sense to run large financial trades in the wide-open way that knickknacks are sold on E-Bay.  

Moreover, if you work for an agency gathering and analyzing national intelligence data, you know that you risk betrayal and prompt termination of your sources if you share that data in any detail with other agencies whether that sharing is accomplished with a USB drive in a diplomatic pouch or a secure Internet connection. Sharing intelligence data between agencies opens the door for another agency’s employees to sell out or damage your agency.

There is opportunity in the unexplored areas of Internet operations but there are those smelly, dangerous dragons. Join me in an adventure in this new territory which we will explore with a new Internet method that protects the traveler from major injury. We call the method Blind Encrypted Data Matching.

If you follow the story on these pages to the story’s conclusion, you’ll understand what the term means and you’ll grasp the strengths and limitations of this new method, Blind Encrypted Data Matching.